{"id":30697,"date":"2015-09-22T07:20:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T06:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=30697"},"modified":"2015-09-22T07:20:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T06:20:13","slug":"hmrc-is-wide-open-to-abuse-because-of-a-lack-of-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/09\/22\/hmrc-is-wide-open-to-abuse-because-of-a-lack-of-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"HMRC is wide open to abuse because of a lack of staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mail has reported<\/a>\u00a0that a carpenter in Hull has been convicted of defrauding HMRC by retrospecively\u00a0adjusting his on line tax returns to claim tax refunds of money he was not due. As they say:<\/p>\n

\n

Mitton then tried to reclaim \u00a3126,181 in 'overpaid' tax in eight months last year and managed to get \u00a388,741 back.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And as they add:<\/p>\n

\n

It is lawful for people to submit amendments, taking into account expenses and income, which are then checked by the tax office.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The sting is, however, in the tail of the report:<\/p>\n

\n

But the court heard that checks are becoming more infrequent because of a lack of resources.<\/p>\n

Severe cuts at HMRC forced 14 offices to close and almost 700 staff members asked to take voluntary redundancy last year.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Joanne Jenkins told the court: 'The position is that HM Revenue and Customs operate on a \"pay now, check later\" basis.<\/p>\n

'Amendments are checked later, if there are any concerns. I am told that the checking happens more and more infrequently due to a lack of resources.'<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ms Jenkins said she had been informed this sort of fraud 'is happening and has happened before' and added: 'I would hope that cases like these show the need to check.'<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I added the emphasis.<\/p>\n

And I am also told that these checks are now incredibly rare.<\/p>\n

In effect HMRC is laying itself wide open to abuse.<\/p>\n

Should anyone really be surprised we have a massive tax gap<\/a>?<\/p>\n

And in that case why should anyone really be surprised that I think it worth investing more in staff at HMRC?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mail has reported\u00a0that a carpenter in Hull has been convicted of defrauding HMRC by retrospecively\u00a0adjusting his on line tax returns to claim tax refunds
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,55,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hmrc","category-tax-evasion","category-tax-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}